Boca Raton prison company to be investigated by U.S. House committee

A flag with the Geo Group logo waves in the air at the Broward Transitional Center, a detention center owned by Boca Raton-based Geo. This week, Geo's CEO received a U.S. House committee letter requesting immigration detention center documents as it opens an investigation into the growing number of detention center contracts and findings of health and safety violations. (John McCall / Sun Sentinel)

Boca Raton-based prison and immigrant detention center company Geo Group was sent a letter this week by the U.S. House Oversight Committee demanding documents for investigation of ICE detention center allegations.

The letter says the committee is investigating “the Trump Administration’s rapidly increasing use of for-profit contractors to detain tens of thousands of immigrants, including a troubling series of reports of health and safety violations and the dramatically escalating and seemingly unchecked costs to U.S. taxpayers for these contracts.”

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Government inspectors said in a June report that some immigrants have been mistreated in Geo detention centers.

"We are in the process of reviewing the letter, but for more than 30 years, GEO’s processing centers have been subject to independent oversight, including full-time, on-site government monitors. We are committed to transparency, and providing the safest and most humane care possible for those in our 14 ICE processing centers is our top priority,” said Pablo Paez, spokesman for Geo.

He previously has said the issues identified in the June report were corrected last year. The company also repeatedly denies that it holds any children without a parent in any of its detention centers.

Geo, one of the nation’s largest detention contractors, has been awarded new agreements this year with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service to operate detention centers for the growing numbers of immigrants being held before legal proceedings. Geo’s detention centers across the country include the Broward Transitional Center in Deerfield Beach.

Geo received $300 million in new ICE contracts in 2017, an increase of more than $100 million from the year earlier, according to the letter. In 2018, ICE contracts grew to $347 million.

Sent to Geo’s CEO George Zoley, the July 10 letter is signed by Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Jamie Raskin, chairman of the subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

The letter requests Geo produce by July 24 a series of documents from January 2017 to present related to its ICE detention centers, including its ICE contracts; those that show the number of people held in the detention centers; Geo’s cost, revenue and profit from the centers; any deficiencies in compliance; and all government and political appointee communications.

Similar letters were sent to DC Capital Partners, owner of Caliburn International, whose subsidiary operates the children’s immigrant detention center in Homestead that has had complaints of sexual abuse; as well as to the CEO of CoreCivic, another prime ICE contractor.

The committee also is seeking information from ICE and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees care for unaccompanied migrant children.